Making Mead

In  just six months or so this mead will be ready to bottle.
 The balloon on top will inflate when fermentation starts
and it will deflate when it is time to rack it. ( transfer
it to a new jug.)

Let me start by telling you a little about mead.  ( A longer history is posted with this blog.) The beverage going by this name dates back to Old English but in actuality mead the drink itself actually dates back to Europe, Africa and Asia.  Mead, also called honey wine, is made by a very simple process of fermenting honey and water that dates back for thousands of years and, according to some experts, was around before beer which is thought by many to be the oldest fermented beverage.  Some of you might remember reading King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  King Arthur and his knights toasted with a mug of mead.  

 “I would sleep while I wait for my repast; and you can entertain one another with relating tales, and can obtain a flagon of mead and some meat from Kai.”  Tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

There are a lot of different recipes for mead  but I decided to make a very simple mead made with a gallon of water, honey, a few raisins, an orange and some "bread" yeast. Oh yeah, you need a balloon as a fermentation lock. 

Just a few minutes ago I mixed the ingredients.  That took all of about 4 minutes.  I shook the mixture for five minutes to fully and thoroughly aerate it and placed a balloon with a tiny hole in it on the top of the water bottle as a fermentation lock.  

In three months, if all goes well, I will transfer that liquid, sans the fruit into another clean jug,  put another fermentation lock...balloon...on it and wait.  I could bottle some it then or wait a few more months.  According to everything I have read, the longer you wait the better it gets.  

Below is a brief history of mead from Mark Beran which I found at http://www.medovina.com/history.htm

The Past, Present and Future of Mead

Transcript from Mark Beran's presentation to the Boulder Revel, March 2006

    Wine has been part of human culture for 6,000 years, serving dietary and socio-religious functions. The history of mead dates back 20,000 to 40,000 years and has its origins on the African continent. In order to really understand the history of mead we need to go much further back in time.

    The origins of mead can be traced back to the African bush more than 20,000 years ago. Feral bees were well established, elephants roamed the continent and weather patterns were seasonal, as they are today in Africa.  Extreme conditions of drought during the dry season, and torrential rains in the rainy season were common. This weather pattern would eventually cause hollows to rot out the crown of the Baobab and Miombo trees, where the elephant had broken branches. During the dry season, the bees would nest in these hollows, and during the wet season the hollows would fill with water. Water, honey, osmotolerant yeast, and time andviola - a mead is born. Early African bushmen and tribes gathered not only honey, but also mead and as successive waves of people left Africa they took with them some knowledge of mead and mead making. 

    Eventually mead making became well known in Europe, India and China. But mead making died out as people became urbanized. This happened 1700 years ago in India, 1500 years ago in China and about 500 years ago in Europe. Honey was prized throughout history, it was often available only to royalty. Somewhere about 1300 A.D., the Italian voyager Marco Polo (1254-1324) returned from the Spice Islands with sugar cane. This inexpensive source of sugar became dominant and honey went underground - well almost. The tradition of mead was sustained in the monasteries of Europe. The need for ceremonial candles made of beeswax necessitated managed bee colonies and surplus honey was used to make mead, which was enjoyed by the monks in their more secular moments. There are monasteries in Great Britain today that have over a 400-year tradition of mead making. The Industrial Revolution resulted in a significant decline in mead making. The first centrifugal honey extractor was invented in 1865 by Austrian Major Francesco de Hruschka. As legend has it, the idea came to the inventor as he watched his son swing a bucket of honey around his head.

    The origins of mead can be traced back to the African bush more than 20,000 years ago. Feral bees were well established, elephants roamed the continent and weather patterns were seasonal, as they are today in Africa.  Extreme conditions of drought during the dry season, and torrential rains in the rainy season were common. This weather pattern would eventually cause hollows to rot out the crown of the Baobab and Miombo trees, where the elephant had broken branches. During the dry season, the bees would nest in these hollows, and during the wet season the hollows would fill with water. Water, honey, osmotolerant yeast, and time andviola - a mead is born. Early African bushmen and tribes gathered not only honey, but also mead and as successive waves of people left Africa they took with them some knowledge of mead and mead making. 

    Eventually mead making became well known in Europe, India and China. But mead making died out as people became urbanized. This happened 1700 years ago in India, 1500 years ago in China and about 500 years ago in Europe. Honey was prized throughout history, it was often available only to royalty. Somewhere about 1300 A.D., the Italian voyager Marco Polo (1254-1324) returned from the Spice Islands with sugar cane. This inexpensive source of sugar became dominant and honey went underground - well almost. The tradition of mead was sustained in the monasteries of Europe. The need for ceremonial candles made of beeswax necessitated managed bee colonies and surplus honey was used to make mead, which was enjoyed by the monks in their more secular moments. There are monasteries in Great Britain today that have over a 400-year tradition of mead making. The Industrial Revolution resulted in a significant decline in mead making. The first centrifugal honey extractor was invented in 1865 by Austrian Major Francesco de Hruschka. As legend has it, the idea came to the inventor as he watched his son swing a bucket of honey around his head.

    Eventually mead making became well known in Europe, India and China. But mead making died out as people became urbanized. This happened 1700 years ago in India, 1500 years ago in China and about 500 years ago in Europe. Honey was prized throughout history, it was often available only to royalty. Somewhere about 1300 A.D., the Italian voyager Marco Polo (1254-1324) returned from the Spice Islands with sugar cane. This inexpensive source of sugar became dominant and honey went underground - well almost. The tradition of mead was sustained in the monasteries of Europe. The need for ceremonial candles made of beeswax necessitated managed bee colonies and surplus honey was used to make mead, which was enjoyed by the monks in their more secular moments. There are monasteries in Great Britain today that have over a 400-year tradition of mead making. The Industrial Revolution resulted in a significant decline in mead making. The first centrifugal honey extractor was invented in 1865 by Austrian Major Francesco de Hruschka. As legend has it, the idea came to the inventor as he watched his son swing a bucket of honey around his head.

    Prior to the mechanized extraction of honey, the honeycombs were simply crushed to remove the honey. This left loads of honey laden, crushed beeswax which could most easily be processed by rinsing the honey out of the wax with warm water. And what became of the honey water? Mead, of course. Mechanized extraction meant less left over comb and less honey water for mead making and a general decline in the craft. Since the mid 1800’s mead making has survived as an artisan craft void of large scale commericalizaton.  It has, howeve, been the topic of two very significant Ph.D. dissertations. Dr. Roger Morse of Cornell University studied and patented two formulas of ideal yeast nutrients for mead making decades ago.   More recently Dr. Garth Cambray of Makana Honey Company in South Africa has written a dissertation on a new process which can take unfermented honey must to 12% alcohol in 24 hours. I had the pleasure of tasting some of the Makana meads at the 2006 IMF in Boulder. They were very impressive and good testaments to the innovation process from which they were made. 

    The modern honeybee can be traced back to just over 1 million years ago. The honeybee has always gathered nectar and pollen and it has been engaged through the millennia in a battle against indigenous yeast. The bees learned through the millennia that by drying the honey and thereby increasing the osmotic pressure they could make their much-needed honey less and less suitable for fermentation by native yeast. A special strain of yeast survived and became ideal yeasts for wine and beer fermentation.

    Fast-forward about a million years to somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago, we have the first indication of man's knowledge of mead. As nomadic peoples wandered out of Africa and into the Mediterranean taking their newer bees with them along with their special yeasts.  they took with them bees, honey and, unknowingingly, osmotolerant yeasts. Wild, indigenous yeasts like those first bio-engineered by bees were responsible for the fermentation of wine grapes - a practice which started in the Mediterranean some 14,000 to 34,000 years later. 

Wassail, drink up and enjoy mead! 

That leads us to today November 4, 2012 and I am making mead for the first time. Wish me luck.  

Until next time....John